There was a small, but significant Italian presence at TechCrunch Disrupt NY this year. I had a chance to meet with Luigi Giglio, CTO and Co-Founder of AppsBuilder, a Milan based startup. I’ve seen a bunch of mobile app generators of varying qualities over the last few years. AppsBuilder is definitely in the front of the class for this genre.
After receiving a brief demo from Signor Giglio, I tried setting up my own app when I got home from Disrupt. I agree with their marketing of this mobile app generating service, “no coding required”.
With AppsBuilder’s development dashboard, I was able to select a background splash, choose my layout of buttons, and then configure specific action–such as pulling in blog content from my RSS feed. Unlike a lot of instant generators, AppsBuilder has paid close attention to giving users more control of layout and design, including special support for iPad and Windows 8. And yes, it automatically publishes to the appropriate app stores. Bravo.
To do more customizations, you’re free to–gulp–add code. But for many SMBs, and perhaps even some departments within large companies, what AppsBuilder provides with their Basic Plan– 15 Euros/month–may be all that they need. More advanced customers can spend extra for push notifications, geo-mapping functions, and their own domain. That last option, will cost 129 Euros.
I’ll have more to say on AppsBuilder in a future post. Overall, it is definitely worth considering if you leaning against taking on the burden of a mobile development project.